


took a tour to see the stars but they weren't out tonight

by thelemonisinplay



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1970s, Developing Friendships, Gen, Hogwarts, Marauders Era (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27710692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelemonisinplay/pseuds/thelemonisinplay
Summary: Sirius can't sleep. Lily is crying in the common room. They're not friends, exactly, but maybe they could be.(It's sixth year, the world is falling apart, and maybe it's time for a little late night conversation.)
Relationships: Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter
Kudos: 10





	took a tour to see the stars but they weren't out tonight

**Author's Note:**

> trans lives are more important than jkr so pls give support to orgs like gendered intelligence instead of buying her new stuff thanks <3

It’s the Monday following the full moon, and though everybody else in the dormitory is exhausted enough after the moon to fall fast asleep by ten o’clock, Sirius is restlessly, relentlessly awake. Which is really unfair, actually, because _James_ is the one who took Astronomy for NEWT and who should currently be awake and indeed in a lesson, but he’s passed out, curtains wide open as usual, sleep-muttering about the fucking Quaffle.

He won’t even lose points for missing the class. Sinistra’s always been lax on attendance.

Sirius rolls himself out of bed, deciding that there’s no point in lying around waiting for sleep to arrive. Not today.

(He does sometimes, of course, when he’s lost in the depths of the fog, a heaviness on his chest and an all-encompassing sense of boredom that nothing seems to help with. Just lies in bed sleeplessly throughout the endless night, hoping that he’ll drift off at some point, hoping that he’ll wake up in the morning as a real person rather than a half-formed monster. But those moments come and go.)

He grabs his Muggle Studies textbook from the pile on the floor, figuring he might as well finish his essay now if he’s going to be awake – then maybe he can sleep in and grab breakfast from the house elves during his free period. Genius. He pads down the spiral staircase barefoot, and makes his way to his favourite sofa by the fireplace.

He’s about to throw himself bodily onto it, when he notices there’s somebody there. Not on the sofa, but in the squashy little armchair beside it. And, oh bloody hell, it’s a girl, and she’s crying. Who the fuck sits in the common room alone in the middle of the night to have a cry? Sirius wonders if he’d be better off running away and leaving her to it – both of them would be better off without him awkwardly attempting to comfort her, he reckons – when he suddenly realises he recognises her.

“Everything okay, Evans?” he asks. He’s compromised between lying languidly across the sofa and running away by perching on the arm, Muggle Studies textbook strewn on the cushions where he’d ideally be resting.

Lily Evans glances up at him, a look of wide-eyed alarm on her face. So he’s made the wrong call. Fuck.

“Hi, Black,” she says eventually, voice catching a little. “What are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, gesturing at his pyjamas. They’re James’s, technically, but Sirius had worn them that first night at the Potters’ and never given them back. Unfortunately, this means they’re Snitch-patterned and several inches too short – James hadn’t quite caught up to Sirius’s height last December when Sirius had moved in – but Sirius isn’t too bothered about embarrassing himself in front of Evans. “You?”

“Just come out of Astronomy,” she shrugs. Which explains why she’s still fully dressed. “Which Potter skived, by the way, and Nina’s off sick, so I had to listen to Eliza Travers telling Ophelia Nott all about Tatiana Carrow’s sex life. In detail.”

Sirius makes a face. “Sorry, Evans, James has been asleep for hours. I’m sure you can fill him in on Carrow’s sex life in the morning, though.”

Evans giggles a little at that, which is good. Sirius doesn’t entirely know what to do with emotion. Not even his own. Which, really, is the root of most of his problems, he supposes, but that’s neither here nor there.

“What’s keeping you up?” she asks. It’s an innocent question, almost Remus-like in its earnest kindness, almost James-like in its directness.

Sirius shrugs. “Fuck if I know. Any reason you didn’t go straight to bed?”

“I just couldn’t stop thinking,” she says. “Everything’s just shit, everywhere. A first-year asked me what Mudblood meant the other day. My sister was horrible about a Muggle friend of mine because she’s a lesbian. And that’s not even getting into the attacks …”

She’s right, of course. It is shit. And Sirius says as much.

“What’s up with your sister, though?” he asks, after she doesn’t respond. He’d not even really known she _had_ a sister until now; they’ve known each other more than five years, living in the same school and sharing the same common room, but it’s only been the past couple of months they’ve been anything more than occasionally antagonistic acquaintances.

Evans sighs. “I don’t know. She just wants everything to be normal, but only her definition of normal. She’s doing a _typing course_ in _London_ ,” she adds, as though that explains everything. Sirius, of course, understands precisely nothing.

“Is that with like, a typewriter? Is she a Muggle?” he says in an attempt to turn the conversation into something comprehensible. He points at the cover of his Muggle Studies textbook, which shows a glossy, Muggle-style still photograph of what he thinks must be a typewriter.

Evans laughs. “Yeah.” She frowns, then. “She’s a Muggle. And I’m not.” A pause. “She used to sound like me, you know?” she adds, and it’s funny, everyone’s accent drifts a little in termtime to the point where they all sound roughly similar, something like the generic southern English of the WWN presenters, but Evans is slipping back to her shorter Midlands vowels now. “And now she’s in London, putting on this fake posh voice and looking for a secretarial job where she can meet some posh man …”

“Evans, no offence, but I have no idea what any of that means,” Sirius says, because the general gist seems to be that she doesn’t like that things are changing, but he doesn’t know enough about Muggle culture to be sure. Secretarial jobs have been vaguely referenced in Muggle Studies, but he really can’t understand what posh men have to do with any of it. “Do you not like that your sister’s a Muggle?”

“I don’t know,” says Evans. She leans back in her chair, looking somewhat defeated. “She just doesn’t like anything that’s different, I suppose. And anything outside of her imaginary posh Muggle London lifestyle is different, including the town we grew up in, and me, and my lesbian friend.”

Sirius sits quietly with that for a moment, thinking suddenly of Regulus, following around the likes of Rosier and Avery and Mulciber; of the rest of the family, ready to sign up their children to a violent hate group just to eradicate difference.

“You don’t have to talk to her, you know,” he says, casually. “Family doesn’t always count for anything.”

“I’m still sort of hopeful we’ll be close again,” says Evans, with a half-smile that doesn’t at all reach her eyes. “Like maybe she’ll change her mind if I just try hard enough. But … wait, you’ve got a brother, what’s he like?”

“He’s a Slytherin, Evans.” Sirius is short, sharp, using the tone that shuts Peter up immediately when he’s saying something Sirius doesn’t want to deal with.

“So?”

“ _So_ , he’s a lost cause.”

“And the rest of your family, how do they take it? My mum can’t stand that Petunia and I don’t get along.”

“Fucking _hell_ , Evans,” Sirius growls, because honestly, can this girl not take a hint? He’s not exactly been encouraging this line of conversation, but she just keeps _pushing_. “Not that it’s _any_ of your business, but I live with James. I don’t talk to any of them.”

“Oh,” says Evans, looking so alarmed and apologetic that Sirius almost regrets lashing out. Almost. “Shit. I’m sorry, I …” she trails off, and Sirius makes no effort to pick up the conversation. He likes her well enough usually, but they’re not friends, exactly, and she’s annoyed him.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, after a pause, and this time it’s less panicked and more earnest. “I … I dunno, everybody I know has such an easy relationship with their siblings. I don’t really have anybody to talk to about Petunia. I’m sorry.”

Sirius sighs. Evans looks so tired, and miserable, and he doesn’t really want her to be upset. “It’s fine,” he says, with a shrug. He doesn’t know how to verbalise that he hates talking about them, or even really thinking about them, without it coming out dripping with rage, so he doesn’t. He thinks they could both do with a change of subject, though, so instead says: “How’s Cerys doing?”

This has something of the desired effect in that Evans laughs, but this leaves Sirius more confused than ever.

“She sat right next to you in Transfiguration this morning, she’s fine,” says Evans with a grin. “Bit of a bruised ego, mind you, but that’ll teach us to celebrate a match win before we play the match.”

Cerys Davies, Gryffindor’s Seeker, had been knocked off her broom by an aggressively-hit Bludger early in Saturday’s game, allowing Regulus to easily the Snitch for Slytherin. Which, as Evans points out, was unfortunate following the party they’d held on Friday, which had been a strange merging of pre-Quidditch excitement and the seventeenth birthdays of both Sirius and Mary Macdonald.

“Blimey, really? I think I slept through the whole lesson.”

“It is astounding that McGonagall hasn’t murdered you yet,” says Evans. And then glances at her watch. “And speaking of sleep, I should probably go to bed.”

“We don’t want _you_ falling asleep in a lesson tomorrow,” Sirius agrees. He doesn’t move when she slides herself out of her armchair, though; he’s not sure he’s tired enough to fall asleep just yet.

“Thanks,” she says, pulling her schoolbag off the floor and glancing somewhere in the general direction of Sirius’s feet. “For listening, or whatever. I hope you get some sleep.”

She scuttles off before Sirius can respond.

“Night, Evans,” he calls across the common room, and she pauses, halfway up the stairs to her dormitory, to send him a smile and a wave.

Weird girl, Sirius thinks. She always has been, but it’s more pronounced now that they’re sort of friendly. He pulls out his Muggle Studies textbook and starts reading up on the section on Muggle jobs that he needs for his essay, eventually gently drifting off on the sofa.

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to go in a completely different direction to how it did, but here we are. lockdown 2.0, back in a different teenage obsession. cool.


End file.
